Thisdayonline.com a news website belong to ThisDay Newspaper has installed a paywall on its site.
The company must be taking the move to shore up its revenue considering the challenging business climate in the country. Publishing outfits are also badly hit coupled with the lack of a strong reading culture.
Therefore, Thisdayonline.com site will be charging all its subscribers a minimum of USD1o per month and USD50 for a full year subscription.
ThisDay christened it THISDAYLive premium. On the paywall application, the company said:
“All visitors have 5 free stories a month, after this please select a plan below to continue unlimited access to THISDAYLIVE, Nigeria’s most authoritative news media provider. Download our Apps to get uninterrupted access via iTunes or Google Play to get free access to all of our news stories.”
Moreover, the decision is ill-advised. Apart from the fact that the pricing is outrageous, ThisDay has not been innovative in the way and manner it markets its digital advertising inventory just like many online news sites in Nigeria.
However, Reliable sources at Vangaurdngr.com, a news website owned by Vangaurd Newspapers, told PageOne.ng that the company makes an average of USD50,000 per month from Google network campaigns.
ThisDay’s has for many years overpriced its website beyond its value to advertisers and agencies. The company has no impression or cost per action, CPA model. It operated a tenancy model that shuts its out of the reach of many clients. When the going was good, the site was offered to the highest bidder in banking and financial services.
Another snag on its plan is that the site is still not premium enough. There are Google Adwords banners all over the sites. This is exactly the opposite of everything premium content. If however, ThisDay wants to charge, the subscription should be as low as USD1-USD owing to the fact that banners ads are still on the site. This will enable it garner a larger subscriber base that can sustain the readership revenue.
Internet readership of news has increased to an all time figure due to the crash in in data prices and influx of cheaper smartphones across the country. It is therefore surprising that ThisDay is planning to shoot itself in the foot.
It will only take a while before the company cave-in and yank off the paywall.
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